::: BEAUTY LIVE IN THE WORLD :::

And Douglas brings humanity to an exceedingly difficult role that could get him an Oscar in an independent film. It shows you that the higher you are, the harder you fall until at the end you are invisible. People who once knew you don't return your calls; others are too busy to see you. He tries to cheat aging by chasing younger and younger women but as a character says to him, "You can't cheat death no matter how many 19-year-olds you talk into your bed".

Douglas's character Ben Kalman, once a reasonable celebrity as `New York's honest car dealer', has seen it all -the heights of fame, the depths of anonymity. Still charming, good-looking, still persuasive, he is invisible because now down on his luck, no one knows him.

Says Roger Ebert, "He isn't solitary by choice but by default. He cheated on his good wife Nancy (Susan Sarandon).

He disappointed their daughter, Susan (Jenna Fischer) one time too many. He cheats on his current companion, Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker), in a particularly unforgivable way. He uses charm and the offer of his experience in life to charm Daniel Cheston (Jesse Eisenberg), a college student, and then betrays him. He has lied to his customers so often that, as everyone knows, `Honest Ben Kalman' spent time behind bars.

Yet he's charming and persuasive. He looks like a winner until you look too close. Solitary Man follows him for several days after he agrees to ac company Jordan's daughter, Allyson (Imogen Poots), as she goes for a college interview.

This is the same school he attended. He knows the dean, which may be a help.

You want to like Ben. He works on encouraging that.

When he was younger and less of a sinner, he must have been good to know, and there's an effective character in Solitary Man who suggests that. This is his old buddy Jimmy (Danny DeVito), who still runs a greasy spoon diner. On campus, Ben befriends the naive Cheston with man-of-the-world advice about sex, success and how to sell yourself. With women, Ben's approach is solicitous: Do some men misunderstand you? Are your qualities recognised? What are you getting out of the transaction?

The film is all about Ben Kalman, but one of the strengths of Michael Douglas' performance is that he isn't playing a character. He's playing a character who is playing a character. Ben's life has become performance art. You get the feeling he never goes offstage. He sees few women he doesn't try seducing. As a car dealer, he was also in the seduction trade. His business was selling himself at a dealership. What about in life when you need a recall?

What happens with Ben and the people in his life, especially the women, I should not hint at here. The movie depends on our fascination as we see what lengths this man will go to.

Solitary Man is a serious comedy, perceptive, nuanced, with every supporting performance well-calibrated to demonstrate to Ben that he can run but he can no longer hide.

Here is one of Douglas' finest performances. Because the other characters, no matter what they think, never truly engage Ben, he's on that stage by himself. Everyone else is in the audience. Douglas plays Ben as charismatic, he plays him shameless, he plays him as brave, and very gradually, he learns to play him as himself.

That's the only role left."

While my guru Roger Ebert calls The ATeam an incomprehensible mess with the 1980s TV show embedded inside, and then uses examples, “I found my attention wandering to the subject of physics. The ATeam has an action scene that admirably demonstrates Newton’s Third Law, which instructs us that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

The movie illustrates this as the heroes fall from an exploding airplane while inside an armoured tank. As the tank hurtles to the ground (cf. Newton’s Law of Gravity), the team leader, Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson), looks out an opening and barks out commands for the tank’s gun. I am paraphrasing: ‘Turn 45 degrees to the left! Fire! Twenty-five degrees to the right! Fire!’ In this way, he is able to direct the fall of the tank and save their lives. This is very funny."

But Brian Salisbury says, "Instead of assaulting us with non-stop action and then having the audacity to mask itself as being high art, The A-Team embraces just how ludicrous the action sequences are and makes absolutely no apologies for it.

That's not to say, though, the movie has nothing to offer beyond the explosions and mid-air collisions. In fact, what makes The A-Team such a damn good film is the clever underscore that complements every moment of mesmerising destruction.

Joe Carnahan, along with the other writers, gives us moments that subtly poke fun at the outlandishness of what we are seeing.

Carnahan recognised that, given the tone of both the series and his last film (Smokin' Aces), the action scenes needed to flow uninterrupted, and here it's very streamlined, only pausing briefly to give us hilarious interactions between the larger-than-life characters before diving head-first back into the explosive fray.

Until the very end of the film, each plan is carried out before our eyes as it is being hashed out to neutralise any lacking in the pace. It would be easy to then accuse The A-Team of being frontloaded, given the slow build to the final sequence, but I would argue that is merely a nod to the evolution of Face's character as a leader and that it never really loses steam.

What really sells this film, however, is its cast. Like the original quartet of chaos, each actor brings something fantastic to the table.

Bradley Cooper, as Face, has that inescapably charming swagger and confidence we have come to expect from him; Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the perfect blend of inthe-trenches badass and cool-as-ice leader. Even Rampage Jackson, in the role made famous by a guy donning the entire payload of Ft Knox around his neck (that’d be Mr T), turns in a respectably tough performance with a few moments of decent hubris. But it’s Sharlto Copley who really steals the show as Howlin’ Mad Murdock. True to his character’s moniker, Copley cranks up the lunacy and plays Murdock with a hilariously reckless abandon that mirrors the tone of the entire film.” My own opinion and, I am allowed one, is that The ATeam was written by one of my favourite thriller authors, Stephen Cannell whom I dote on who despite dyslexia not only has written hit after hit TV shows but hit after hit books. You are advised not to smoke Hannibal Smith’s cigars or go over the top like Copley or wear a Mohawk like Jackson otherwise have a ball even if you don’t understand what’s going on which I didn’t, sticking to the basic principle of, it moves fast, it’s in colour and lots of thing go boom.

Cameron Diaz is perfect as a goofy, high on life and bubbly girl next door. And director James Mangold has gems like Walk the Line and Girl Interrupted to his credit. When such stalwarts come together, you expect nothing but a blockbuster.

However, somehow Knight and Day falls short of all expectations. Blame it on the `formula' script that fails to bind it into a memorable watch. But what shines despite the run-ofthe-mill, secret agent meets girl next door story, is the crackling chemistry between the lead actors.

The movie begins with June Havens (Diaz) getting on a plane she was not supposed to be on where comes across the charming and intriguing Roy Miller (Cruise) whom she had already bumped into twice at the airport. The sparks fly and she is all set to seduce Roy but she is not aware that he has already assassinated a few other passengers and pilot on board. After landing on a field Roy warns June to be careful with people who will come after her to know about Roy and they might even kill her. June tries to run away from all the troubles that follow after the crash, but realises she and Roy have to work as a team if she wants to survive. Roy explains he is trying to save a genius high school inventor Simon (Paul Dano) and his cre ation -a perpetual energy battery called the Zephyr -from falling into wrong hands. While on their way to take Simon to a safe location, they are chased by the FBI and a Spanish arms dealer, Antonio (Jordi Molla). While June falls for Roy's charm, while in hiding in Austria June comes to know that Roy himself is involved in trading the Zephyr with Antonio.

The movie has been shot in exotic locations like Austria and Spain and involves lots of action and thrill. The lead actors are given ample space to let their chemistry bloom on screen. Cruise is one of the most bankable stars of Hollywood and he proves it in the movie which n spite of having a nothing new to offer has been ef ortlessly carried by him with his charm and acting skills. Diaz has done full ustice to her role as con used and bubbly girl goof ng things up. It's because of hese two that one can find he movie interesting enough till the last scene.

All said and done, don't go to watch it expecting it to be next MI series or Mr and Mrs Smith as it is not that sleek or that smouldering.

Take it as a summer fling, which is interesting, engaging and a fun way to pass time.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jordi Molla and Viola Davis

The Karate Kid before release was thought to be an okay movie. But then, the unexpected happened. It became a huge success. Both the critics and the audiences loved it despite the fact that the original Karate Kid was a 26 year old franchise, but recently the 11year-old star Jaden Smith surprised even the studio that made the new movie, Columbia Pictures, by bringing in $55.7 million on opening. People said that the most the movie would bring in was $ 30 million.

"We were definitely thinking low 30s would be great", said Doug Belgrad, President of Columbia Pictures, "Anything more than that would be gravy. And anything over $ 40 million was the kind of number you wouldn't dare to speak of, it was so out of the realm of the possible". What worked was the movie was it a score of A with test audiences with the under 18s giving it an A+.

Then there were the parents who grew up in 1984 who watched the original and wanted their children to meet Mr Miyagi and Daniel-san.

When Jaden began taking Karate classes his father thought about remaking the old hit. Jaden had already acted with Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.

Jaden is reported to have said, "Dad was seeing how good I was getting and he was like, `You know what Jaden? We should remake The Karate Kid. I was like, `Seriously?
Whoa!"'.

Columbia who backed Will Smith in the Men In Black days gave the green light, switched the story's setting to China -where there's a huge audience, adding a global star like Jackie Chan to what's an amazingly non white cast with pros like Will and his wife Jada who's Jaden's mother on board as hands-on produces just made everything right. Said The Karate Kid director Harald Zwart, "Will thought of everything including getting Justin Bieber to sing one of the songs."

Said Columbia's head, "We have started talking about a sequel but we didn't want to jinx it before it opened."

The other star Jackie Chan whose real name is Chan-Kong-San has appeared in more than 100 films. His highest grossing film was 2001's Rush Hour 2.

He worked as a stuntman on Bruce Lee's master pieces Fist Of Fury and Enter The Dragon before headlining his own Mega hit in 1978, Drunken Master.

He holds the Guinness records for "most stunts by a living actor" his animated show Jackie Chan adventures ran for five seasons. He voiced characters in Kungu Fu Panda. He has released 20 albums in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and English.

And he studied at the Pecking Opera School as a child and still often sings his own theme songs for his movies. With all this and the Smiths and Jaden high kicking and Bieber singing I guess you pay what it takes to see The Karate Kid.

Said Jaden Smith, "When I was younger, I was like, `I want to be trained by Jackie Chan.' And now here I am doing a movie with him!" Of his three-hour daily training regimen, the hardest thing was probably the stretching. I'd cry sometimes, it was so painful. I have always wanted to be an actor. My parents said, `You can pick your career, do whatever you want to do. Now if you mess up, don't blame it on us'."

Showing proper martial-arts respect, Jaden made sure to check in with the original Kid, Ralph Macchio. "I talked to him over the phone once. He said, `This is going to be a good movie. Don't screw it up."

When you have Jackie Chan sharing screen space with Jaden Smith (Will Smith's son), you expect magic, and you won't be disappointed with Karate Kid. The remake of 1984 hit of the same name, Karate Kid has perfect balance of humour, drama and, of course, martial arts.

Frankly, instead of Karate Kid, the movie should have been named Kung Fu Kid, as the focus is on kung fu rather than karate, but who is complaining?

The movie begins with Dre Parker (Smith) moving to China from Detroit with his mother Sherry Parker (Taraji P Henson). While Sherry tries her best to make her son adapt to the new environment, Dre finds it very difficult to be a part of the world that is not only new and different, but also speaks a different language. While trying to know the guys in his neighbourhood, he comes across Meiying (Wen Wen Han), a beautiful young violinist, who quickly becomes good friends with Dre.

But Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), a bully and a family friend of Meiying's, does not approve of Dre and her getting close . He ends up hitting Dre with some serious kung fu moves.

Dre and Meiying continue being friends, while Cheng continues bullying Dre now and then as they all attend the same school. While Cheng and his group are bashing Dre up one day, the building's maintenance guy Mr Han (Jackie Chan) comes to Dre's rescue. Watching Cheng and friends misusing kung fu and their teacher Master Li teaching them not show mercy to their opponents, Mr Han decides to teach Dre `the real Kung Fu' and participate in a tournament against Master Li's students.

While learning kung fu, Dre and Mr Han get closer battling their inner demons and fears as well.

Harald Zwart who has tried comedy before with Pink Panthar 2 has used a fine balance between hu mour and action. The training session scenes and the chemistry between Chan and Smith make the movie interesting. The cinematography is good, especially during the scenes from Wudang Mountain. Chan is in a different role than other movies in the role of a drunkard loner who keeps to himself but is a good person with the right knowledge of kung fu.

Those who are hoping to see Chan kick butts will be disappointed as he barely shows his moves. The movie actually belongs to Smith, who is on his way to stardom. From comedy to emoting to action, Smith proves he will be ruling the box office just like his famous father. The antagonist Cheng can not only do some serious kicking but also is good in emoting and has done full justice to his role. It won't be a surprise if we see him becoming the next Jet li.

Though the Karate Kid has a Bollywood feel to it, especially at the end, one cannot deny it is worth your ticket money. All in all a worthwhile movie for your children's summer break and many of the parents can even reminisce about their childhood as well. Karate Kid Director: Harald Zwart Cast: Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P Henson, Zhenwei Wang and Wen Wen Han Being screened.